NICKI WAS STILL TRYING to figure out just what Shane had up his sleeve as he pulled out a wooden chair for her at the pine kitchen table and went to the fridge.
“You hungry?” he asked, opening it, the light shining over him in his T-shirt and jeans. It brushed over his broad shoulders, the ridges that defined his upper back.
Her heart caught in her throat. Was she hungry?
For him—always.
It looked as if he might even be setting up some kind of food fantasy, and she thought of what might be in the fridge. Strawberries, whipped cream…
“I’m up for anything,” she said. “I didn’t have much for dinner.”
“Me, neither.” He straightened up and closed the door.
She sensed some real tension in him. It was as if he had something to say and he couldn’t figure out how to do it. But, earlier, when she’d told him that he seemed quiet, it’d been because she’d actually wondered if he was all right. She hadn’t wanted to overtly ask him, but the way she’d phrased it had let him know that she noticed something was amiss.
Were they friends enough to talk about deeper things with each other by now?
Before she could broach the subject, he walked toward the back door. “There’s not much around here for food. How about we raid the mess pantry?”
“Okay.” She was still puzzled about what he was doing as they walked the short distance from his house to the mess hall, where the hands ate and where there was a kitchen for the cook to work in.
Shane must’ve already known what he wanted as he faced the pantry shelves, snagging a package of angel hair pasta, a green pepper, garlic cloves and a can of diced tomatoes. He grabbed some shrimp and feta cheese from the refrigerator, too.
“Anything else?” she asked, entertained by a man who knew enough about cooking to have a firm recipe in his head.
His arms were full. “How about fixings for a salad? And—” he jerked his chin to indicate the shelves “—maybe one of those?”
Nicki saw that Jerry, the Slanted C’s cook, had purchased a few pies from the Golden Crust bakery in town: apple, cherry, rhubarb.
She picked the apple pie, since the bakery was known throughout the county for them. “Looks like Cook cheats.”
“Don’t they all?”
“No, our Mrs. Callahan makes everything fresh.” A sinking sensation weighed in Nicki. “For as long as she’ll be able to, anyway.”
Shane was on his way out, and he paused, his brow furrowed. But then he stepped through the door, holding it for her with his foot as she exited.
When they reentered the house’s kitchen, he went straight for the counter, setting down his foodstuffs, then taking the pie, lettuce, tomatoes and avocado from her. He fetched a few spices from an iron rack over the stove.
“You want to take care of that salad?” he asked.
“Sure. But I’m curious about what you have in mind with the pasta.”
From the way he moved around the kitchen, after washing his hands and drying them, it was obvious that he was a natural here. Like many other things about Shane, it turned her on.
“Greek-style scampi,” he said, getting a pot out of the cupboard, filling it with water, then giving it a couple of dashes of salt before turning on the heat.
“Sounds good.” Nicki washed up, too, then rinsed off the lettuce and tomatoes. “When did you learn to cook?”
“Back when I lived here, I used to eat at the mess with the hands most nights, but I picked up cooking from Mom whenever I was around.” He wiped down a large wooden cutting board. “There’d be times when it’d just be the three of us for dinner—Mom, Tommy, me. Those were good nights.”
Nicki watched as he lay down the cutting board and took out a couple of sharp knives from a block on the counter.
They’d skipped over the fantasy part of the night and had gone straight to pillow talk, hadn’t they? And, if she didn’t know any better, she’d think that Shane Carter had…well, a few feelings that had nosed their way into this tenuous relationship of theirs.
In light of that, she again started to wonder just what they were to each other at this point—neighbors?
Friends?
Or could it be that he’d gotten sick of her in bed already and was just trying to build a good working relationship for the rest of the time he was in attendance here? If she were to believe in Shane’s fickle love-’em-and-leave-’em reputation, she might’ve placed a wager on this particular theory.
As she cut a tomato in half, she decided to just come out and ask him.
“Shane, why did you call me over here tonight?”
“Do I need a reason?”
“Up until now there’s always been one.”
He was already cubing those avocados on the same cutting board, bringing them arm to arm, and he didn’t look up from his efforts. “Is it too much to think that maybe I like being around you?”
Warm fuzz surrounded her heart, cradling it. “You do?”
He stopped cutting, looking at her, his dark blue eyes soft with some kind of emotion that she couldn’t quite grasp. “How could I not?”
“I don’t know. It’s just that we had…”
“Conditions? I suppose we did. If I’m trampling all over them by being friendly, I’ll back off.”
Being friendly. That was one way to say it.
But Nicki liked where this was leading. Lovers one night. Friends the next.
And after that—who knew?
She almost laughed at her newly won romantic confidence. But why not?
Why wasn’t improvement possible with a womanly makeover in not only her physical side, but her attitude, as well?
“Shane, I don’t want you to back off at all,” she said, smiling, going back to chopping that tomato. “I’m enjoying this. I don’t know what it all means, but it’s nice.”
He didn’t say anything to that, and Nicki guessed it was because definitions probably scared a player like Shane. But maybe one night, he would clearly see what they were to each other.
Maybe, then, he’d stick around longer than he’d originally planned…?
Boy, this was a dangerous emotional game she was playing, especially knowing that she’d come into this whole thing believing it was temporary. But one night had led to another, and here she was.
Hopelessly hopeful.
When she finished with the tomatoes, she turned her head away, stifling a sudden yawn that had crept up on her. It wasn’t even all that late, but it’d been yet another stressful day.
“Am I keeping you up?” he asked.
“Hardly.”
“You don’t have to explain. It’s a lot of work keeping our places going.” He was tearing the lettuce, putting the leaves into a large ceramic bowl. “But it’s all a labor of love in the end.”
“Yeah.” Love for a place that would always be in her system. Love for everyone who lived on the W+W and had tried to maintain it with their own blood, sweat and tears.
“Hell,” he said, “I didn’t know how much I’d missed the Slanted C until I set foot on the grass again.” He put down the knife, then gave her a look that seemed to reach right into her. “I came back here to raise this place up to what it used to be years ago.”
He spoke with such restrained passion that she rested her fingers on his wrist. She didn’t need to say out loud that she understood: he was a lot like her, they were both a part of the land, etched into the foundations of those stables and barns, lost without their homes.
As the water came to a simmer in the pot, Nicki felt her skin burning against his, and he eased out from under her fingers, as if disturbed by what he felt.
Once again it was as if he had something to say, but when he merely put the pasta into the water, Nicki didn’t press him.
AS FULL NIGHT SPREAD over the sky, Candace drove to town, radio blaring while she sang along to an old Go-Gos song.
Russell should be back in his hotel by now, and she wanted to give him a rousing rendition of room service.
She walked through the Hacienda Hotel’s lobby, which was late-night silent, then up the staircase, to the second floor, where she’d spent so much of today in Russell’s bed.
After she knocked on his door, she smoothed out the short black dress she’d changed into. She’d paired it with high boots and a tasteful, fitted dark orange sweater since it’d gotten colder outside. Halloween colors for the approach of the holiday in a few nights.
She heard the click of the door lock, and she helped to push it open, softly saying, “Treat or treat. You gonna give me something good?”
By the time she stepped inside, Russell was already walking away, dressed in a robe provided by the hotel.
Someone was in a hard-to-get mood, but Candace wasn’t about to tease him about it. It could be that she’d interrupted a business phone call, and she wasn’t going to be That Girlfriend, who got on his case for not paying attention to her one thousand percent of the time.
She rounded the corner and found him packing his suitcase. Blood singing in her veins, she wrapped him in a hug, then stood on her tiptoes for a kiss.
Fireworks, stars…they all boomed and blazed for her until she realized that she was the one kissing him and not the other way around.
She pulled away. “Bad night?”
“Not really.”
He was so cool that she could’ve used another sweater.
As he went about packing again, she glanced in his suitcase. There was an array of clothing in there—and none of it seemed to reflect a certain taste or style.
She searched for a spot of yellow—her scarf that he’d taken today, as a memory of their first time together—but she didn’t find it.
Not until a flash caught her eye from across the room, inside the iron-laced trashcan under a desk.
Her mind went cloudy as she walked over to it, pulling out the scarf.
Russell halted in his packing. “I meant to take that out of there.”
“What’s it doing in there?”
Her chest, her stomach…everything had constricted.
“What is it doing in there, Russell?” she repeated.
Sitting down on the bed, he ran a hand over his mouth, then said, “We should talk.”
“No, you’re the one who should be doing all the talking right about now.” Very calmly, she put the scarf into her purse. It was as if someone had set her brain on fast motion while everything else raced to catch up.
That damned phone of his rang again, the chimes bashing into Candace. She went for it on the desk before he could get there first.
All she meant to do was keep it away from him so he wouldn’t find an excuse to get out of this, but then she looked at the screen.
“Margaret,” Candace said, her mind a full-on Tilt-a-Whirl.
Russell spread out his hands, and she could tell by the “oh, well” gesture that he wasn’t going to avoid explaining.
“She’s an ex. I’ve been trying to break up with her, but she keeps calling and texting. She dropped by this evening—”
Candace held up her hand. “That was your appointment?”
He nodded, glancing at his phone in her hand. It was still ringing.
She thought of all the times that this phone had gone off with that personalized chime ringtone. Thought of the smiling, decent guy she’d believed he was—the one who’d kept his hands off of her until business was supposedly done.
“As I was saying,” Russell continued, “she was here earlier. I was going to tell her all about us until she saw your scarf and went berserk.”
A story pieced itself together in Candace’s mind. “She threw my scarf in the trash. She knew it belonged to another woman.”
“Exactly.”
Even as he said it, Candace had the feeling he was lying. He was good at using a poker face in business, but, now with the phone still ringing and Margaret at the other end of the line, he wasn’t so Joe Cool.
She made to answer the phone before it went to voice mail, but he took it from her before she could manage.
The ringing stopped, anyway.
“You’re so full of it,” she said.
At being called out, his skin went a bit pale under its tan.
“I’ll bet Margaret was never even here,” she said. “And I’ve got the sneaking suspicion that she’s still your girlfriend, and since you have no intention of breaking up with her, you put my scarf in the trash. You never intended to keep it. You just wanted what you wanted and when you were done, you threw it away.”
A true trophy, Candace thought. Not a memory for him to hang on to….
When he didn’t tell her she was wrong, Candace blew out a breath. Stupid. How much of an idiot was she to have taken up with a liar—a guy who probably had a different woman for every business trip? A man so filled with testosterone that winning was all that mattered.
All her life, she’d been so good at picking men who had never even dreamed of letting her down—it’d always been her breaking ties with them. Always.
And here she was, a loser, but this time not because she’d been laid off a job or had her life as she’d known it crushed.
When Candace looked at him now, she didn’t see a man who was the be-all-end-all. She saw a scammer.
“I’ll bet you even lied when you told me that the W+W is going to end up in a fine spot,” she said, and somehow she sounded calm. It gave her even more strength. “Did you lie so you could get me into bed?”
“I never lied.” The smoothness was back as he adjusted his voice, the man who could talk a woman into anything. The man who had. “I told you it would all be good, Candace—I just didn’t say what ‘it’ was.”
“Oh, you’re a pro with the words, aren’t you? You might not have lied, but you sure as hell misled.”
With commendable slowness, Candace took her scarf out of her purse, laid it over her shoulders so that it draped down from both sides.
Hers again.
“Lucky Margaret,” she said facetiously, already on her way to the door. “And lucky Nicki.”
That last part was the honest truth.
“What do you mean?” he asked.
Candace rested her hand on the doorknob before opening it.
She realized that a huge load had just been lifted from her.
No more Russell meant no more dude resort.
But it left another weight in its place, because what now?
What could they do for the W+W?
She didn’t let that get her down. “Nicki’s lucky because I just got a good look at what kind of hand you like to play, and even if you were to come through with the mother of all offers for her ranch, I’m going to see to it that she shoots you down. There’s not another Wade in existence who’ll get into bed with a snake like you.”
Big words, and Candace momentarily panicked at not knowing how to back them up.
But as Russell Alexander got a smug look on his face that told her he was going to win, no matter what she said, Candace opened the door and walked out on him.
Numbed, she went back to the ranch, only to find that Nicki wasn’t there, probably at Shane’s, so she sat on the back porch, listening to the beautiful night sounds that had always lulled her to sleep during better times. From the employee cabins, she heard the laughter that always seemed to bolster the W+W.
Children breaking their good-night rules, still up, still having fun.
Something hitched in her mind. Kids. Happiness. The ranch.
And that’s when it came to her, even in the midst of pain—or maybe because of it: the memory of a networking party she’d attended at college, hosted by a favorite, now-deceased professor. He had introduced her to his guests, his contacts, and one of them…
One of them had been involved with a charity for kids.
Candace bolted up from the swing, running to her room, where she kept her laptop computer. She fired it up, looking through her files, her mind speeding with ideas.
By morning, she was ready to turn the tables on Russell and on life.
AS PRE-DAWN CRACKED THROUGH the window of Shane’s bedroom, he squinted his eyes. And, when he felt Nicki’s body stretched out next to his, he brought her closer.
Damn, she smelled just like…Nicki. Morning musky, with a trace of summer.
His arms tightened around her, and he tried to think of how they’d ended up here, in bed, last night after dinner.
Stomach full, sleepy from yet another long day of work… She’d suggested watching a movie on TV, but he hadn’t wanted to be anywhere near his father’s main room—the living area with the chair and that television Dad had so loved to watch. Shane had told her there was a TV set in a bedroom at the end of the hall… She’d obviously thought that, this was it, time for another bout of Nicki vs. Whoever Shane Wanted to Be Tonight, but he’d only been tired, feeling good about just being with her, and they’d taken off their boots, crawled onto the bed, and…
Then that had been it.
They’d fallen asleep without any funny stuff.
She seemed to come fully awake just as he did, and he laughed softly.
“What would people think,” he asked, “if they knew that I had a platonic night in a bedroom?”
“I think they’d be okay with it,” she murmured into his T-shirt covered chest.
He played with one of her curls, watching it spring back into place.
“I have so much to do today,” she said.
Smiling, he kept exploring the fascinating bounce of her curls. “Like what?”
“For one thing, Halloween’s in a few days, and I promised that I’d help the kids with a haunted maze out in the yard. It’s right at the top of my to-do list.”
That was her biggest priority? Shane marveled at how she could still find time to be caring amid all the business.
“Why not use the community barn for that?” His finger traced her cheekbone, and she shivered.
Was she remembering Pirate Night, as well?
She cleared her throat. “I thought we’d just keep all the trick or treating near the house. We’re having a piñata that’ll be hung from the old oak tree in back.” She touched his chest. “But we could use the barn again. The two of us. You know—for another…thing. Some night.”
His body went taut before he could stop it, but he forced himself to relax. Last thing he wanted to do was ruin everything by telling Nicki that he couldn’t possibly have sex with her when he might have to stab her in the back with the Lyon Group.
“Yeah,” he said, “some night.”
“We always seem to do what I want, don’t we?” she asked. “How about you, though?”
“What kind of scenario would I pick?”
“You’ve never thought about it?”
He laughed. “I’m pretty willing to roll along with whatever your creative wiles come up with.”
“You don’t have any…quirks?”
Shane thought about it. “I just like what I like, I suppose.”
“You know what I think you’d be in to?” she asked, raising herself up so that she looked down on him. Those beautiful green eyes in the pre-morning light, that mouth, those gorgeous curls…
“What?” he asked.
“A harem.”
He raised a brow.
“Oh,” she said, “I’m not suggesting that we go around town collecting women to put in a tent or anything. It just seems that you like to call the shots when we’re messing around. You like to be the boss, like a sheikh or master.”
Tagged. She definitely had been coming to some conclusions about him.
“So…?” she asked.
“I like that idea.” His libido agreed, too, growling, making him consider reaching on up and pulling Nicki down on top of him to start Harem Time right now.
But what little honor he had wouldn’t allow it.
“Great, I’ll take care of everything, then,” she said, sitting all the way up, stretching her arms.
“You take care of so much, Nicki,” he said.
She halted mid-stretch, smiling down at him. “I guess I’m just like that. An orchestrator. But, believe me, it’s fun to do that kind of decorating and dressing. I didn’t get to take part in much fun before now, actually. I didn’t do much of anything growing up unless it involved riding. My horse Pegasus and I used to comb the fields nearest your house during my free time. That was back when he was alive.”
She blushed so red that Shane chuckled.
“I remember seeing you sometimes,” he said, “just on top of the hill. A little cowgirl on her horse. When you saw me, you’d ride off as if you’d been caught doing something you weren’t supposed to.”
“I didn’t want you to know that I had a huge crush on you.”
His heart felt gripped by a hand. “Did you?”
“Don’t make a big deal out of it. It was just a thing.”
With that, she rolled out of the bed, as if she really didn’t want to talk about it. But Shane was still touched.
Nicki had nursed a crush on him.
“I’d like to stay, but duty awaits,” she said.
With that, reality rushed back like a kick to the head. Reality awaited, all right. And it would probably crush Nicki all over again, except not in a sweet way.
She pulled on her boots. “Thanks for dinner. And…the whole night itself.”
He sat up. “Yeah, thanks for that, too.”
With a grin, she left him alone, and he glanced out the window, thinking that he should get a move on, himself. Besides morning work, he needed to talk with his mom before that conference call with the lawyer.
After Nicki left, Shane mucked out the stables, since most of the available staff were on duty at the main barn. Then he showered and subjected himself to the conference call.
Just prior to that conversation, Mom had ended up giving him her blessing to do whatever he thought was right. She didn’t have much fight left in her, and who would, after years of living under the thumb of his dad?
Shane left the lawyer to create a list that would be presented in a counter-offer only if the creditors called, but none of it sat well with Shane that day.
And nothing got much better. He made calls to anyone and everyone, seeking a way out of having to give in to the Lyon Group. He even talked to every bank he didn’t think his father had approached, but the lines of credit were overextended already.
A few days later, by the time Halloween rolled around, Shane knew that he was in a corner he’d never get out of. His own family’s lenders still hadn’t called in the loans, but the week hadn’t officially ended yet.
Maybe tomorrow morning he’d have to completely throw in the towel to Russell Alexander.
Meanwhile, he couldn’t avoid telling Nicki his situation any longer, just in case tomorrow really was D-for-Disaster-Day. So, his stomach in knots, Shane ventured over to the W+W, just as the sun was going down. No one much ever came to the Slanted C for trick or treating; the employees were all single men to a number, and the townsfolk had better doors to knock on, so he wouldn’t be deserting anyone tonight.
He’d been working so hard to find some funding that it had offered no time to see Nicki this week. Still, he’d been leaving her messages since he’d last seen her, making excuses about being busy.
God, he’d have to make it up to her somehow, especially after having to tell her the news tonight, in case it became public tomorrow morning.
He went straight to her house, where stacked hay bales waited outside, composing a maze strung with huge fake spider webs and bats, plus a couple of eerie scarecrows to boot. And when he walked over to the entrance, where Manny sat, holding a bowl of candy and dressed like some kind of lazy male witch with a pointed hat, Shane heard scary sounds emanating from the boom box near Manny’s boots.
The gap-toothed guy put a flashlight under his face. “Something wicked this way comes.”
Shane couldn’t have said it any better.
“Hi, Manny,” Shane said. “You seen Nicki around?”
“Out in back of the house. The kids’re into all sorts of stuff, like bobbing for apples.”
Now that Shane was aware of it, he could hear the children over the noise of the boom box. He thanked Manny and went around to the back, where big tubs of water and floating apples had been placed on the ground and a pumpkin piñata dangled from an oak tree.
A little Harry Potter-looking boy was swinging a bat at the orange globe while other rug rats jumped up and down in glee. And Nicki…
In the porch’s light, he could see that she was dressed as she came, as a cowgirl, flushed and laughing, helping Harry Potter to swing.
As Shane watched her, it was as if his world slanted, as if the axis of it had embedded itself in his chest. And when Harry Potter took a great whack at the piñata, connecting thanks to Nicki’s help, she gave him a big hug before he went off to collect the candy with the others.
She stood there with her hands on her hips as the parents encouraged their kids in the candy grab.
With every passing second, Shane could see how her smile faded, just as if she was realizing that this might be the final Halloween on the ranch.
You take care of so much, Nicki, he’d said to her the other morning.
And she really did—she was everyone’s compass here, everyone’s guiding force. On her face, she had the look of a woman who had already let everyone down, too, and it blasted into Shane.
But what could he do?
It took everything he had to step forward, to where the porch lamp revealed him.
When Nicki saw him, she lit up, just as luminously as a candle flame.
She was happy because of him, and he wished that he didn’t have to tell her the news and destroy her night. Destroy everything, just as he’d done with so many hearts back in his younger days.
He heard his father’s voice again. You damned screw up…
Nicki walked over to him. “Happy Halloween.”
“You, too.”
Did he really have to do this? Whenever he’d let down people before in life, he’d never thought a second time about it. But this wasn’t the same.
“Good timing,” Nicki said. “I was just about to turn everything over to one of the ranch moms.”
“Why—you have big plans?” He wouldn’t dare interrupt them.
“Well, a few days ago, before Candace left for the city, I thought we were going to town.”
“Where is she?”
“Last time I talked to her, it was by phone the other morning, after I came home from your place. She was already gone when she told me that Russell Alexander is a snake and that I should spread word to all the ranches in contention that no one should make deals with him. She said he’s been up to some shady maneuvers and she’ll explain more when she gets back. Evidently, he lied to her about the W+W being in a good spot with the Lyon Group, and she took off to the city for a few days to do what she called ‘reconnaissance.’ That’s Candy, though—always with an idea.”
Had Candace found out about Shane’s creditors and Alexander’s offer, too? Was she chasing down some of her business school friends to help Nicki now that matters with the Lyon Group had fallen through for the W+W?
Candace couldn’t have discovered Shane’s business, though, because Nicki would’ve stormed over and let him have it before now.
Even so, dread was hounding him. But the sooner he could tell Nicki, the better….
“Can we go somewhere else to talk?” he asked.
She grinned. “Sure thing. I have just the place.”
She was watching him as she had the other night, when he’d invited her over and she had clearly been expecting him to be leading her into some kind of game again.
But the only role he was set to play tonight was of the guy who was going to break her ranch.
And her, right along with it.
Instead of walking inside the house, she pulled him to the side of it, where her truck waited. She jumped inside, every movement crumbling Shane’s resolve that much more. Tires ate the ground as she pulled out.
Shane tried his damnedest to think of what he was going to say as they arrived at the community barn—the place where they had done all that swashing and buckling several nights ago. She hopped out of the cab, a flashlight in hand, shining it at him while she went to the door and he got out of the truck.
“Come on,” she said, starting to undo a new lock on the door. “I’ve had this set up for a couple of days now.”
“Wait.” He couldn’t take this anymore. “I didn’t come over here tonight for that.”
She hesitated, then turned off the flashlight, just as he continued.
“I’m so sorry, Nicki.”
“Sorry for what?”
Shane steeled himself, because his own heart felt as if it were breaking, too.